Produce Plus and PMA Australia-New Zealand have announced Matthew Crouch of Freshmax Australia as the winner of the Marketer of the Year Award 2016 for the ‘Sumo Citrus’ marketing campaign.

Crouch was unveiled as the winner of Australasia’s premier marketing award for the fresh produce and floral industries on Wednesday 18 May at the PMA Fresh Connections conference and trade show in Brisbane during the Gala Dinner.

Freshmax holds the exclusive marketing rights to Sumo Citrus mandarins in Australia and New Zealand, supplying Woolworths stores with the unique-looking, top-knotted, larger-sized mandarin from July to August. Using traditional and digital media as well as in-store tastings, Crouch and the Freshmax teamed raised awareness and increased consumption of the fruit.

Freshmax also worked with Collier Creative to produce an animated video with an anti-bullying message, portraying Sumo Citrus as a gentle giant and defender of smaller fruits. The campaign also took on a longer-term ethical approach by partnering with the Bully Zero Australia foundation, which now uses the Sumo Citrus animation at its workshops at schools across the country.

Sumo Citrus was singled out by the judges as a unique, creative and impactful campaign.

“We’d like to congratulate Freshmax on this outstanding campaign,” said Gabrielle Easter, editor of Produce Plus. “Matthew Crouch and the marketing team have developed an engaging and memorable animation with Collier Creative that does more than just promote Sumo Citrus as a fruit – it challenges assumptions about the way traditional media can be used in fresh produce marketing, and it challenges the assumptions we have about time frames around marketing fresh fruit. It’s so great to see a company engage in a longer-term, ethical approach to marketing.”

“PMA A-NZ warmly congratulates Matthew Crouch and the Freshmax Marketing Team on their excellent Sumo campaign,” said Michael Worthington, CEO of PMA Australia-New Zealand. “Consumers love variety when shopping for fresh produce and yet many smaller and unusual products just cannot get noticed – this campaign really does do a great job at grabbing consumers’ attention. And we really liked the way they made the connection with the very worthwhile charity for anti-bullying, Bully Zero.

“Overall it was a very well thought-out and executed campaign and a very worthy winner of this year’s premier marketing award for our industry.”

Marketing manager of Freshmax Australia Matthew Crouch said he was humbled to even make the shortlist for the award. Crouch thanked the Sumo Citrus growers, the agencies Collier Creative and Flourish PR who worked with Crouch on developing the campaign, and thanked Freshmax Australia general manger Mark Leng for pushing him to enter for the award.

“It’s been great to be able to challenge the way that we try and deliver messaging to consumers,” Crouch said. “We were very lucky to be able to deliver a campaign that effectively challenged bloggers to the idea that we don’t have to pay a fortune to work with them, but that we want to be helping consumers learn about health and new produce.

“I urge, more than anything else, that we should challenge everything we see as the normal way to market in this industry.”

Freshmax Australia’s winning Sumo Citrus campaign was one of a strong field of finalists for the Marketer for the Year award, which included Montague Fresh Queensland for the Somomo campaign; Lucy Gregg and the Reid Fruits team for the ‘Gold Kangaroo’ brand protection campaign; the Mountain Blue Farms marketing committee, led by Ashlee Kilmartin, for the Eureka blueberries campaign ‘Start your day with Australia’s new blues’; and HM Clause Pacific’s campaign, led by Graham Adams, to promote Jamaica and Rosada melons in Australia.

An interview with Matthew Crouch and the Freshmax marketing team on the Sumo Citrus campaign will appear in the upcoming Spring 2016 issue of Produce Plus.

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